ARTICLES ABOUT STANDARDIZED TESTS BY DATE - PAGE 3

State lawmakers in Florida are pushing a "reform" bill that promises to turn teaching in public and charter schools in the Sunshine State on its head. CS/SB 6 is supposed to go after bad teachers, but the way the bill's written, it'll do a whole lot more. The bill establishes merit pay and teachers who get high marks would earn more money. But, pay and job security depend on how well students do on standardized tests. The bill also eliminates tenure and replaces it with annual contracts.

Teachers unions say it will destroy public schools. Supporters say it's a long-overdue tool to weed out bad teachers and reward highly effective ones. The question: Should teacher pay — and job security — depend on how students score on standardized tests? Florida's Republican-led Legislature is advancing a proposal to do just that, and gut seniority-based teacher tenure that's been around for decades. The bill (SB 6) would prohibit Florida school districts from using seniority and advanced degrees in setting pay for teachers beginning in 2014.

Then-President George W. Bush signed the law in January 2002. The goal was to close the achievement gap between minority and white students and make all students "proficient" by 2014, as defined by their performance on standardized tests. The law required states to develop tests in reading and math, which must be given to all students if those states are to receive federal funding for schools. Schools that do not meet the goal of yearly student progress could be penalized, lose money or even be forced to close.

The U.S. Census Bureau needs to hire about 4,000 people in Palm Beach County to help with the 2010 census, and it took applications Monday. More than 100 people had already arrived at the Urban League's doors in West Palm Beach by 10 a.m. when the job fair began. But they learned upon arrival that the actual test won't be given until noon Tuesday. Those who came early instead got a shot at a practice test similar to the official one given by the federal government. "The test is more difficult than most people would think, especially if you've not taken a test recently or are not used to standardized tests like the SAT or ACT [taken for college admission]

Posted by Akilah Johnson on November 27, 2009 03:09 PM, November 27, 2009

High school students get ready for end-of-course exams. The statewide-final exams--the same for students from Miami to Tallahassee--won't start until next year, our sister paper the Orlando Sentinel reports. The paper reports that the Florida Department of Education will start out by standardizing algebra 1 and geometry exams early next year, adding to the battery of tests it already gives many of its 2.6 million public-school students. By 2011, the Florida Department of Education plans to give the two math tests to all students taking those two high school math courses.

Elementary schools in Palm Beach County are ditching the traditional one-teacher model in a plan to raise achievement and get ready for tougher state standards. Beginning in August, students in third, fourth, and fifth grades will have different teachers for reading/language arts, math, science and social studies - similar to middle school. Teachers at all 105 elementary campuses will be selected to teach those subjects based on FCAT performance by their students in recent years. A teacher with a record of raising math scores will teach only math.

If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. - A Nation At Risk (1983) Let us limp down memory lane to mark this week's melancholy 25th anniversary of a national commission's report that galvanized Americans to vow to do better. Today the nation still ignores what had been learned years before 1983. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once puckishly said that data indicated that the leading determinant of the quality of public schools, measured by standardized tests, was the schools' proximity to Canada.

Dear Teacher: My daughter e-mailed her child's fourth-grade teacher saying that her child had been averaging about two hours of homework a night. The child has no time for doing kid things after school, as she has to go to bed early so she can catch the school bus in the morning. This is what the teacher replied: "Homework has increased lately because it is crunch time before standardized testing. I also have been giving the children time to start their homework in class. Today, they had the last 35 minutes to work on homework.

A Plantation learning center that usually focuses on math prodigies decided to continue a program it started last year to help struggling math students. Called Boosted Learning for Achievement on Standardized Tests, or BLAST, the program is open to second-graders who score below the 70th percentile on standardized tests. Scores from last year's 23 participants improved nearly 16 percent on average, so the center decided to do it again. "The test results from the students who participated in our pilot program . . . were spectacular," Terry Kaufman, president of the Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science, said in an e-mail.

One question often asked of those who run a math program for gifted children: If it's so great, why don't you do it for everybody? Now, on the heels of the founder's retirement, the Institute for Mathematics and Science, a learning center that produces talented mathematicians like some schools produce star athletes, has created a pilot program to help struggling students. Twice a week for about a month, 8-year-olds have sat in the center's pastel blue rooms to sharpen their multiplication skills and gain confidence in their abilities.